Pentecost 3

Last week in the Dream-and-Tarot group the students journeyed in their imagination with a symbol. I was a symbol from their dreams or a symbol that was interesting for them, charged with emotions or dear to them. After the journey we worked with the cards in relation to the symbol. Most of the people asked a question that helped them to ‘earth’ the symbol, to make it useful in their daily lives. One of them asked what she had learned about herself in her journey. And was also possible to ask how the symbol could give healing or peace. I spoke to one of the students a few days later, and she told me that the session had changed something. She felt lighter and less lonely in her job in which she carries heavy responsibilities. I was thinking: “Why don’t I do this myself?”

I thought it would be nice to do a journey with the flames of Pentecost in order to give a value to this feast (something that came up in my second entry about Pentecost). The flames represent the Holy Ghost. They are often depicted on the heads of the disciples in paintings of Pentecost. I could easily do a visualization, because I was part of the day in bed, still feeling not well. So I did.

The first step is to relate yourself to the symbol as it is (color, shape, texture, warmth, and emotional impact). I visualized the room with disciples that Giotto had painted, the picture in my first entry of Pentecost, and I visualized a flame (there are no flames on this painting).

I looked at the flame from all sides. It was a quiet flame. What made the most impact on me was that, when I related to the flame on the emotional level, there came a lot of space in my belly; it was orange and filled with emotion, but open.

The second step entails that that symbol moves (moves as in ‘going somewhere’, ‘doing something’), or changes (of color, shape, texture). The flame went to my head, and I felt myself awkwardly sitting, I felt uncomfortable, and afraid, I did not want receive it. Felt a bit of shame about that. But in fact the flame was not that scary. After that the flame began to move, it spread down behind my back, as if supporting me. That was a really wonderful feeling.

The first day of Pentecost I wrote about my fears: the uncontrollable fire of Pentecost. It was not like that at all in my visualization. My visualization started when the flames were already there, so I did not experience their coming, which is in a storm. I started when the flames were there. But when the flame was there and on me, it did not feel at all as something to be afraid of, as something uncontrollable which shifted my life in a tower-like manner. No, not at all. It was a quiet flame, and it supported me.